LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Building the language base for research: the impact and future of Language-Based Area Studies
Event date: 14 December, 2012
Location: Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre SOAS, London

(BRISMES) British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Annual Conference 2012
Event date: 26 March, 2012 - 28 March, 2012
Location: Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science

Languages for the 21st century: training, impact and influence
Event date: 1 September, 2010 - 2 September, 2010
Location: The Edge, University of Sheffield

Supporting our international future: cross-sector partnerships to promote languages in Scotland
Event date: 1 December, 2008
Location: University of Edinburgh, Playfair Library

A Web-as-Corpus approach to populating Wikiversity for teaching about Islam and Muslims in language, linguistics and area studies

Arabic language and Islamic Studies: who studies Arabic and how can these skills be used at university and beyond?

A model for collaboration between HE and non-HE institutions in developing an Islamic Studies module (Qur’anic Arabic)

Islamic Studies provision in UK higher education

International approaches to Islamic Studies in higher education

Extending good practice in less widely used less taught (LWULT) languages

PG certificate/diploma in teaching Arabic
SOAS Language Centre is pleased to offer a new Postgraduate Certificate and Diploma in teaching Arabic, which will contribute to the professionalisation of Arabic teaching in the UK and elsewhere.

Funding for Islamic Studies (deadline 21 May 2010)
The Islamic Studies Network invites applications for small project funding to enable the further development of good practice in teaching and learning within Islamic Studies and to facilitate wider sharing across the UK.

Call for papers - special issue of Language Learning Journal

Papers are invited for a forthcoming special issue of the Language Learning Journal, the official journal of the Association for Language Learning (ALL), on Languages of the Wider World: Valuing Diversity.

Centres for Excellence in language-based Area Studies

Funding targets greater understanding of China, Japan, Eastern Europe and Arabic-speaking world.

Schools 'teaching 30 languages'
The BBC new website, 21st June, 2005, reports that the number of pupils taking GCSEs in languages such as Chinese, Arabic and Turkish has doubled in the past decade.

Language learning gains popularity
An article on the Guardian newspaper website, 21st June, 2005, reports that more pupils are opting to take GCSEs in Arabic, Chinese and Spanish as the traditional allure of French wears off.

Language students to help army in Iraq
An article in the Guardian, 18th February 2004, reports that students of Arabic are being encouraged to put their degrees on hold to join the British army as interpreters in Iraq.

House of Lords debate Middle Eastern and Central Asian languages

Extracts from the House of Lords debate on what action the Government is taking to encourage British students in United Kingdom universities to study Middle Eastern and Central Asian languages (21 January 2004).

Middle Eastern Studies in the United Kingdom

The study of the Middle East in UK universities dates back at least to the seventeenth century. The Middle East is taught and researched by scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines and student numbers studying Middle Eastern languages and area studies have substantially increased in the last few years.

The Languages of the Wider World CETL
The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), Languages of the Wider World (LWW) is hosted jointly by the School for African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) and University College London (UCL). Funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), it was set up in 2005 and is one of only two CETLs in the UK devoted to language learning and teaching and learning.

Plenary: Languages in Higher Education Conference 2008: transitions and connections

To follow

Arabic: Study materials
Steve Cushion, London Metropolitan University, has expanded his Arabic teaching materials, which now include: GISMO 3 Arabic Authoring Package, basic text-editing software for Arabic, and Arabic study material for use off-line. The Arabic Authoring Package enables you to create your own interactive computer activities to develop proficiency in all four skills. You can tailor activities to the exact needs of your students and over time you can build up a bank of activities to support your classroom teaching. Activities can be carried out either in school or at home.

Arabic: Learning to read Arabic - a beginners' guide

This instructional booklet is for students who wish to learn to write Arabic. It is designed for independent study using a step-by-step approach. Each manageable unit has plenty of references to other materials. Dr Randal Holme, University of Durham Language Centre, directed the project.

Authorware: The GISMO Project (Guildhall Interactive Software for Multimedia Online)
A selection of teaching materials produced by The Department of Humanities, Arts and Languages at London Metropolitan University using the authoring program developed within the department that allows language teachers to prepare their own audio-enhanced websites containing a variety of interactive exercises. Any educational institution is welcome to use this material. The software combines the ability to edit your own text and then to record someone reading it, all using the same program. The sound and text are then automatically integrated and a web page containing the exercises is generated.

Arabic for beginners
Interactive exercises for Arabic created using 'Interactive Language Learning Authorware' designed by Steve Cushion, Guildhall University.

Middle Eastern Studies research materials in Arabic and Persian
The aim of this project is to assist researchers to locate, in UK university libraries, works written in Arabic and Persian. At present tracing such material can be difficult, particularly as much of it is still only represented in local manual catalogues. Under this project, the participants will add records for around 60,000 Arabic and Persian items to local, national and international catalogues. The records will be created on RLIN, the bibliographic database of the U.S.-based Research Libraries Group, with the bibliographic description entered in both romanised (transliterated) script and in the original Arabic script. Not all libraries are currently able to make use of the Arabic script in their local system, but the aim is to 'future proof' the conversion work at a time of rapid change in the area of computer handling of non-Roman script. Records for over 38,000 Arabic and Persian items had been added to local catalogues. Two of the partner libraries, Durham and SOAS, have recently implemented the Innopac Arabic script module, and so are able to display records in the original script.